Lori Goldston

Lori Goldston is a performer, teacher, and studio musician who has worked with the likes of David Byrne, Mirah, Nirvana, Cat Power, Laura Veirs, Heather Duby, Ellen Fullman, The Presidents of the United States of America, John Doe, Marco de Carvalho, Seattle Creative Orchestra, Cinerama and many others from 1983 to the present. She has also participated in cross-disciplinary works, composing music for film, theatre and performance. She is currently composing for a Middle East influenced, acoustic rock band and enjoying her ongoing work with an improvisational music, noise and spoken word ensemble; a suite of solo cello structured improvisations; and preliminary groundwork for a multimedia opera that looks at the nature of personal risk in leftist politics. Lori has received numerous awards and grants from King County Arts Commission, Artist Trust, and Jack Straw Productions, among others. Her work was recently featured on Seattle Channel’s Art Zone.

Lori also received GAP Awards in 1996 and 1998.

As part of her Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Lori sat in on Seattle’s Nova High School’s weekly afterschool music improvisation class. She talked about her work as a musician and her background as an improviser. The 20 students, teachers and Lori improvised together for about an hour; Lori played cello, and the others vocalized and played instruments, laptops and found objects. After each piece there was discussion about everyone’s take on what had just transpired. Lori feels that the skills she has developed as a musician, artist, collaborator and improviser have been enormously useful and enriching: listening, intuitive thinking, fluid collaboration and inventive imagination. Kids are natural improvisers, and are being handed a world with enormous problems, and it is clear to Lori that in the near future enormous amounts of creative thinking and intuition will be required.